Trivia

The elderly couple seen hugging on the bed while water floods their room were the owners of Macy's department store in New York, Ida and Isidor Straus, both of whom died on the Titanic. Ida was offered a seat on a lifeboat but refused so that she could stay with her husband, saying, "As we have lived together, so we shall die together." There was a scene filmed that depicted this moment but was cut from the final version. It was Mrs Straus' who originally said "Where you go, I go" that inspired Rose's same line in the film.

The scenes set in 1912, i.e. the whole movie except the present-day scenes and the opening and ending credits, have a total length of two hours and forty minutes, the exact time it took for Titanic to sink. Also, the collision with the iceberg reportedly lasted 37 seconds, which is how long the collision scene is in the movie.

When Jack is preparing to draw Rose, he says to her, "Over on the bed...the couch." The line was scripted "Lie on that couch", but Leonardo DiCaprio made an honest mistake and James Cameron liked it so much he kept it in.

James Cameron went on the dives to the real Titanic himself, and found it an overwhelming emotional experience to actually see it. He ended up spending more time with the ship than its living passengers did.

The scene in which Rose meets Jack to thank him for saving her life was improvised by the two actors at James Cameron's request, and the spitting scene was almost all ad-lib. Cameron also credits Kate Winslet with writing the heart-wrenching "This is where we first met" line during the final sinking, as well as suggesting Rose spit in Cal's face rather than (as scripted) jab him with a hairpin. According to Zane they had to do so many retakes, he sort of went numb being spit in the face and Winslet started using lube because her saliva ran out.

The hands seen sketching Rose are not Leonardo DiCaprio's, but director James Cameron's. In post-production, Cameron, who is left-handed, mirror-imaged the sketching shots so the artist would appear to be right-handed, like DiCaprio.

James Cameron instructed the actors playing the officers to keep order amongst the extras in the sinking scenes. Jonny Phillips ad-libbed the moment when he whips around with the gun and shouts "keep back, or I'll shoot you all like dogs!" After the take, James Cameron ran up to him and told him it was great and to do it again, and Phillips asked "What did I say?", having been too caught up in the moment to realize what he was doing.

Many of the "core extras" used for the movie took on characteristics of actual survivors. One scene where two little girls are loaded onto a lifeboat and the man says, "It's only for a little while" is based on testimony from one of the girls who survived. The man also says in the scene, "Hold Mommy's hand and be a good little girl." According to survivor Eva Hart, these were the last words her father said to her before the lifeboat she was in was lowered.

With her nomination for Best Supporting Actress at age 87, Gloria Stuart became the oldest person to ever be nominated for an Oscar. Stuart held this record for 19 years when in 2018 Christopher Plummer was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at age 88. Stuart however, stills holds the record for oldest woman nominated in supporting actress.

Approximately 120 tons of water (triple what had been initially planned) were released for Eric Braeden's final scene. Braeden said that he has never been more terrified in his life than when he was preparing for it, as there was obviously no possible physical rehearsal.

At $200 million, the movie cost more than the Titanic itself. The cost to construct the ship in 1910-1912 was £1.5 million, equivalent to $7.5 million at the time and about $120 to $150 million in 1997 dollars.

When James Cameron was writing the movie, he intended for the main characters Rose DeWitt Bukater and Jack Dawson to be entirely fictitious. It was only after the script was finished that he discovered that there had been a real "J. Dawson" who died aboard the Titanic. This "J. Dawson" was trimmer Joseph Dawson, who had been born September 1888 in Dublin, Ireland. His body was salvaged and buried at Fairview Lawn cemetery in Nova Scotia with many other Titanic victims. Today, his grave stone (#227) is the most widely visited in the cemetery.

The post-sinking scenes were shot in a 350,000 gallon tank where the frozen corpses were created by applying a powder on the actors that then crystallized when exposed to water. Wax was applied to hair and clothes to create a wet look.

Rose laughs during the flying scene when Jack sings "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine," as if she recalls the song from before. This is because a deleted scene shows the two characters singing it as they come out of the 3rd class dance.

When James Cameron decided to include real footage of the Titanic's remains on the seabed, he did not want to simply shoot from inside a submersible as had been done for the IMAX documentary Titanica (1992). To allow filming from outside the sub, Cameron's brother Mike Cameron and Panavision developed a deep-sea camera system capable of withstanding the 400 atmospheres (5878.38 psi) of pressure at that depth.

In the scene of Rose looking through the corridors for Jack, the water used was actually from the Pacific Ocean at the Baja California, Mexico set. The water was so cold that when Rose gasps when she first dives into the water, it was actually Kate Winslet's genuine reaction to the frigid ocean.

When the scene where a wall of water bursts through a doorway was first shot, James Cameron said that the 40,000 gallons of water dumped into the corridor set were not enough, and asked for triple that amount. The set had to be rebuilt to stand up under the additional weight of water.

James Cameron was adamant about not including any song in the film, even over the closing credits. Composer James Horner secretly arranged with lyricist Will Jennings and singer Céline Dion to write "My Heart Will Go On" and record a demo tape which he then presented to Cameron, who responded very favorably and included the song over the closing credits. The song went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

In preference to hiring new extras all the time and repeatedly having to fit them for clothes and coach them in proper 1912 mannerisms, a group of 150 "core extras" was hired who would stay with the picture through the entire production. They and other performers learned proper 1912 behavior in a 3-hour course from Lynne Hockney, who was also the film's choreographer. Hockney also produced a video "Titanic Etiquette: A Time Traveler's Guide", which was then left playing continuously in the wardrobe department.

The movie's line "I'm the king of the world!", which was ad-libbed by Leonardo DiCaprio, was voted as the #4 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007. The same was voted as the #100 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

The staircase is not technically accurate, being slightly larger in the film than it was in real life. This is because people in 1997 were a bit taller than in 1912 so they would have looked out of place on a staircase that fit the correct dimensions.

Jack has a line during the first-class dinner scene in which he asks Molly Brown which utensils to use for what. Because of the enormous amount of time spent shooting the scene, having to provide different angles and coverage for all the cast members at the table, Leonardo DiCaprio was so worn out towards the end that he picked up a fork and asked Kathy Bates, "Which one of these do I use to lobotomize myself?"

The piece of wooden paneling that Rose floated on after the sinking is based upon a genuine artifact that survived the sinking and is on display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, though it was scaled larger to provide sufficient buoyancy as a life-raft for Rose.

On the final night of shooting in Nova Scotia, one or more criminals mixed the dissociative hallucinogen PCP (angel dust) into the clam chowder served to the cast and crew. 80 people were taken ill, and more than 50 were hospitalized with hallucinations. When James Cameron realized what was happening, he forced himself to vomit before the drug took full effect. Bill Paxton felt listless for two weeks after the incident (although PCP's primary effects only last a few hours, the drug itself can take eight or more days to completely metabolize out of the body). The culprit(s) were never caught.

When old Rose is looking at her drawing in the water, her original line was supposed to be "Wasn't I a hot number?", but both James Cameron and Gloria Stuart felt that this line was out of the character for Rose, so it was changed to the one in the final film.

Kate Winslet was one of the few actors who didn't want to wear a wetsuit during the water scenes. As a result, she got hypothermia, and nearly quit the production. However, James Cameron persuaded her to stay.

During the corset scene, it is originally Rose who is supposed to be tightening her mother's corset. However, James Cameron and the actresses felt that the scene had much more of an effect of Rose being in the corset.

Initially, Céline Dion didn't want to record "My Heart Will Go On" because she didn't want to sing another film song and she didn't like it when James Horner first played it to her; she disliked Horner's singing abilities. After she was convinced by her husband René Angélil, she stepped in and recorded the song in just one take, so the song that was used over the end credits and later released is actually a demo.

During the part when Rose and Jack are at the bow of the ship when Rose says "I'm flying, Jack," the sunset was real and not CGI. James Cameron said that it was the perfect time to do that scene before the sunset goes away.

In the film, Molly Brown lends Jack a tuxedo that she has most likely purchased in Europe for her son who is supposedly the same size as Jack. (The real Molly Brown did indeed have a son, Larry, who was 24 at the time that the Titanic sank.) The scene is very similar to one in the 1953 film Titanic (1953) when Clifton Webb is standing in front of a mirror in a tailor shop onboard ship admiring the brand new suit made for him (which is also for a grand dinner in first class just like in Jack's case). Cameron's original script contained this shop and had Rose and Jack going there together in order to aquire the latter's appropriate dinner attire. In reality there was no such store on board the Titanic.

This was the first film to be nominated twice for an Academy Award, for the portrayal of the same character: Kate Winslet received a Best Actress nomination for her role as Rose and Gloria Stuart received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of the older Rose. The next time this happened was with the movie Iris (2001), which also starred Winslet.

The first class lounge was deemed to be too expensive a set to be built. As a miniature of it was required for the flooding scenes, one was built to quarter of the real size. This was then greenscreened as background for the scenes where the actors were seen sitting in the lounge.

In the movie, Jack is a 3rd class passenger on the Titanic who sneaks his way up to first class with the hopes of never getting caught. In the real disaster in 1912, Third Class Passenger Hilda Maria Hellström really did sneak up to first class out of curiosity and never got caught, however she was in her 3rd class cabin when the Titanic hit an iceberg and ended up surviving the sinking by boarding one of the last lifeboats to leave, Collapsible C.

When Jack sneaks onto the first-class deck in search of Rose, we see a young boy playing with a top as his father looks on. The father is played by Titanic historian and author Don Lynch, of the Titanic Historical Society, who served as a consultant on the film. The scene is based on a famous photograph taken aboard Titanic during the second leg of the voyage, between Cherbourg and Queenstown (the photographer, Fr. Francis Browne, a Jesuit priest, left the ship when it docked briefly in Ireland). The boy, 6-year-old Robert Douglas Spedden and his father Frederic O. Spedden of Tuxedo Park, NY survived the sinking, but the boy died three years later in an auto accident in Maine, one of the first recorded in the state.

Production of the film began in 1995 when James Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the Titanic. He was able to persuade 20th Century Fox to invest in the film by convincing them that the publicity surrounding a real-life dive to the wreck would be really beneficial to the production.

In 2012, 100 years after Titanic sank, the entire wreck site was mapped for the first time. Until then, only the bow, stern, and areas in between were explored. Upon completing this, Disaster Investigator James R. Chiles virtually and in 3D reassembled Titanic. He concluded that Titanic was not poorly built, was not built of inferior materials, and had no design flaw. In fact she floated longer than her builders expected once she struck the iceberg. Even a modern-day battleship would not survive the sideswipe blow the iceberg gave Titanic that night. Also, he concluded that the stern end likely corkscrewed to the sea floor once under water.

At the TED conference in February 2010, James Cameron stated: "Secretly, what I wanted to do was I wanted to dive to the real wreck of Titanic. And that's why I made the movie". The statement brought laughter and applause.

James Cameron forfeited his $8 million director's salary and his percentage of the gross when the studio became concerned at how much over budget the movie was running. He noted that initial compliments over the raw footage became more sparing over time as the costs spiraled out of control, and the studio heads at Paramount "acted like they'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer" as the release date drew near. Even Cameron himself was at one point convinced that the film would bomb, and he would never work again.

Following her grueling experience on the film, which included a rigorous filming schedule as well as experiencing many hardships and bruises, Kate Winslet said, "You'd have to pay me an awful lot of money to work with James Cameron again" (apparently, her request was granted, because she has been confirmed to appear in Cameron's Avatar 2 (2020)). Leonardo DiCaprio also acknowledged it was a tough shoot, yet he stated that if he would ever do another action movie, he would want Cameron as director.

Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Barry injured themselves while filming the scene in which their characters pull up a bench in third class and use it to smash a gate open. DiCaprio threw out a shoulder, and Barry caught himself in the chin with the bench.

Lindsay Lohan auditioned for the role of Cora Cartmell. Lohan, who was then an unknown and was only 8 years old at the time casting took place, was the top choice for the role. However, James Cameron felt that Lohan's fiery red hair would confuse people into thinking she was related to the characters Rose and Ruth, who both had fiery red hair. Alexandrea Owens was cast instead.

In the scene in the beginning where the captain orders full-speed ahead and the shot moves down into the boiler room, the set was really just about three boilers but the film makers had huge mirrors installed to visualize a great big long room. (In this scene you can see workers shoving in coal, and about 20 feet down the room you can see the mirror image of the workers).

When the stern of the ship is vertical, Chief Baker Joughin (Liam Tuohy, in white) is drinking from a flask. Joughin was one of few to survive the freezing water, allegedly due to the alcohol (but this is disputed as unlikely since alcohol is known to accelerate hypothermia, not to help resist cold). The scene was added after Liam showed the flask to James Cameron explaining that it was a family heirloom as old as the Titanic itself.

James Cameron infamously threatened to fire anyone who would dare get out of the tank for a bathroom break while shooting the lifeboat scenes, leading to more than a few actors (including Kate Winslet) relieving themselves in the water.

The opening was originally going to be an Irishman painting the word 'Titanic'. During that same scene, it is not, as believed by some, a real film from her departure in 1912. James Cameron wanted to use actual footage, but at the time there was none. So he attempted to create what he thought took place. However after the movie was released, some actual footage was discovered.

According to the cast and crew commentary on the Special Edition DVD, the first scene filmed between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet was the nude scene where he draws her; the last shot of the film was the flooding of the captain's wheelhouse. It was a three second sequence that required multiple cameras and safety divers and a stuntman to play Captain Smith.

There was a scene storyboarded, in which Rose was to walk off the Carpathia and disappear into the crowds. Since the budget had run so high, however, James Cameron had to cut this scene due to the expense of having almost 1,000 extras brought to New York to film just 30-seconds.

Eager to get the role of Rose, Kate Winslet sent James Cameron daily notes from England, went to LA and kept phoning him. "You don't understand! I am Rose! I don't know why you're even seeing anyone else!"

In 2012, Entertainment Weekly reported that when the movie was re-released in 3D, James Cameron didn't update any effects or fix any errors except one. When astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, first saw the movie in its original theatrical release, he noticed that the configuration of stars in the night sky during Rose's night in the water bore no resemblance to what the sky really looked like over that place on that night (and, in fact, the same incorrect set of stars had just been duplicated in post-production). Tyson wrote a letter to Cameron explaining the error; several years later, upon meeting Cameron in person, Tyson repeated his complaint; and then at an event that occurred at the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson spoke about it to Cameron a third time. Finally, a post-production technician working on the re-release called Tyson and asked him to provide a picture of what the sky really would have looked like, and Tyson's star image was used to fix that shot. Before the shot was fixed, the stars were arranged to look like the Heart of the Ocean necklace.

The scenes during which Thomas Andrews chastises Second Office Charles Lightoller for sending the boats away without filling them to capacity is the only scene in the entire film in which the actors' breath was not digitally added in later.

In a 2012 interview on MTV News, shortly before the movie was re-released in 3D, Kate Winslet admitted that she strongly dislikes the song "My Heart Will Go On," which was recorded by Céline Dion and prominently included in the film. She said about it, "I wish I could say, 'Oh listen, everybody! It's the Celine Dion song!' But I don't. I just have to sit there, you know, kind of straight-faced with a massive internal eye roll... It haunts me."

The original release date was 25 July 1997. When Harrison Ford, whose upcoming film, Air Force One (1997), was scheduled to be released the same day, found out, he demanded that Paramount push the release date to a different time. Paramount, who had distributed many successful films of Ford's, agreed, being worried that Ford would never do another film for them again. Ford may have had a point, because Titanic was subsequently released on the same date as Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997), which became a massive box office bomb as a consequence.

Famous American author Morgan Robertson published a novella titled The Wreck of the Titan in 1898. It is a fictional story about a large passenger liner that struck an iceberg while sailing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically, the story line in Robertson's book contains very striking resemblances to the events of the RMS Titanic, despite it being written fourteen years earlier.

In the scene where the lifeboats are rowing to the Carpathia, there is a brief scene that shows Fifth Officer Lowe waving a green flare and shouting something, but for dramatic reasons the diologue is muted. If you were to read his lips, you can tell he is saying "Come on, put your backs into it, men. We've been saved! Row!"

Only the starboard side of the exterior set was completed. In the scenes portraying the ship at the Southampton dock, all shots were reversed to give the appearance of the port side of the ship, as it was actually docked in 1912. This required the painstaking construction of reversed costumes and signage to complete the illusion, which was achieved by reversing the image in post-production. One cast member joked, "I wasn't dyslexic before starting this show. I am now."

James Cameron wrote the role of Lewis Bodine with his friend Lewis Abernathy in mind. When he couldn't find an actor to play the part, he went to Abernathy and asked, essentially, if he would play himself. Abernathy replied, "If you want to f*** up your movie by casting me, buddy, alright."

At the party in steerage, a foreign-speaking man is speaking with Rose and she says "I'm sorry, I can't understand you." The man is Swedish, probably a friend of Sven's, and he's saying to her "Talar fröken svenska?" In English that translates to "Does the miss/lady speak Swedish?" which she obviously doesn't.

River Phoenix was James Cameron's first choice to play Jack Dawson. By the time the movie was made, River Phoenix had died and Leonardo DiCaprio had reached the perfect age. Ironically when Johnny Depp was offered the role of Jack, he turned it down.

The film was initially budgeted by Twentieth Century Fox at $135,000,000, but set construction had been so costly and time-consuming that the film was already two months over schedule before any filming was done. Fox required the aid of a second studio to cope with the costs. Universal Studios was in the running for a long time, but ultimately passed. Paramount Pictures was finally willing to step in and contribute an additional $65,000,000, in exchange for U.S. distribution rights.

Even though the film brought them great fame, both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are now embarrassed by their performances in this film. Winslet called her American accent "awful" and feels that her acting "could have been better", while DiCaprio called himself a "young punk" in this film.

James Cameron originally wanted Enya to compose the score for the film and even went so far as to assemble a rough edit using her music. When Enya declined, Cameron hired James Horner (who had composed the music for Cameron's previous film Aliens (1986)) to write the score. Horner stated that the tensions with Cameron were so high during post-production of "Aliens" that he assumed he and Cameron would never work together again. However, Cameron was so impressed with Horner's score from Braveheart (1995) that he contacted Horner, who was willing to forget the past. According to some accounts, Horner independently decided the film's score should be done in Enya's style. As a result, several pieces of the score sound very similar to some well-known Enya songs, in particular her theme song for Far and Away (1992) (Book of Days).

Jack's portrait of the one-legged prostitute is actually visible for two frames as he turns the page to his sketch of "Madam Bijoux". James Cameron decided not to show the portrait as he thought the audience would imagine something better.

Fay Wray was originally offered the role of the older Rose but turned it down, saying, "I think to have done this film would have been a tortuous experience altogether". Hollywood legend Ann Rutherford also turned it down.

The rooms that Caledon Hockley, Rose DeWitt Bukater and Ruth DeWitt Bukater occupied (B52, B54 and B56) were actual rooms on the real Titanic. They were originally booked by J.P. Morgan, but he canceled before the ship sailed. Morgan had a controlling interest in International Mercantile Marine, a conglomerate that owned the White Star Line. It was said that Bruce Ismay booked the rooms following Morgan's cancellation, but this was never proven.

In the original script, after Jack, Fabricio and Tommy break down the locked gate, Rose steps through the wreckage, threats the steward to get him fired, and orders him to escort the steerage passengers to the boat deck immediately. As filming progressed, James Cameron became impressed with Jason Barry's performance in a relatively small role and wanted to give him a stronger scene. With Kate Winslet's blessing, Cameron changed the gate breakdown scene to give Tommy the last word instead of Rose.

Ranks first in the Academy Award Most Nominated Films List with 14 nominations, tying with All About Eve (1950) and La La Land (2016). La La Land (2016) is the only out of the three films to not win Best Picture.

The detached stern section of the full-size set was moved onto a separate tilting platform which would allow it to be rapidly turned vertical for the final phase of sinking. There were 10 takes, each requiring 100 stunt players to fall from or along the set while 1,000 extras were attached to the railings by safety harnesses.

The deep-sea camera held only 12 minutes' worth of film, but each dive took many hours. To make the best use of his resources, James Cameron had a 1/33 scale model of the wreck constructed and used it to rehearse each dive. The Russian sub operators would walk around the model ship holding model subs in their hands as Cameron explained the shots he wanted.

James Cameron met his fifth wife, Suzy Amis, on the set of this film. He was technically still married to Linda Hamilton but they had been living apart for some time. Of all his marriages, the one with Amis has lasted the longest.

In a deleted scene, called Ismay's guilt, it shows the life boats arriving near the Carpathia, and Bruce Ismay gets on and he looks around as the sad theme plays and everyone in the crowd is watching him. In real life he did the same thing. And in later interviews he "couldn't bear the sight of the Titanic sinking" (in the movie, he indeed averts his eyes from the sinking ship). After the Titanic disaster he kept a low profile. On October 17th, 1937, Joseph Bruce Ismay died of a stroke and is buried at Putney Vale London cemetery.

The scale model of the under water wrecked ship, has been on display in the Titanic museum in Branson, MO for a number of years. In August 2011, it will be removed and taken back to Hollywood where it is to be used to film the new Titanic 3-D movie.

In the movie the original script included scenes of newlywed couple Daniel and Mary Marvin, Daniel being a cameraman and son of Henry Marvin, co-founder of the movie production company American Mutoscope & Biograph. Daniel Marvin died aboard the Titanic, but not without photographing some of the only existing film of the liner. The Marvins were actually featured characters in S.O.S. Titanic (1979) which also starred David Warner (Lovejoy).

A number of scenes are arranged and in some cases scripted almost identically to similar sequences in A Night to Remember (1958). This is particularly true of these scenes: - Thomas Andrews telling Capt. Smith the sinking is "a mathematical certainty"; - The Titanic's band preparing to depart at the end, only to turn around and regroup as Hartley begins playing "Nearer My God to Thee" by himself (though a different version of the song is used in the 1958 film). - A shot of Ismay in a lifeboat as the Titanic sinks behind him. - Thomas Andrews looking at a painting as Titanic prepares to sink - Andrews encountering a man by the Grand Staircase and telling him the ship is doomed (in this film, he tells Rose).

To sink the Grand Staircase into the purpose-built 5 million gallon tank, 90,000 gallons of water were dumped through it as it was lowered into the tank. Such was the volume that the staircase was ripped from its steel-reinforced foundations. This is possibly what really happened to the Grand Staircase during the sinking in 1912. When the wreck was searched following its discovery in 1985, nothing remained of the staircase.

At the time of filming, it was believed that the ship broke into two pieces (as shown in the CGI animation at the beginning of the film), but as of 2016, it is now known that the ship broke into three pieces, the famous bow section, the imploded and crumpled stern section, and the middle, double-hull of the ship, which had planed away and accounts for approximately 100' of her total 883' of length and sits far from the wreckage, near the outer rim of the debris field. James Cameron acknowledges this error, but defends his description of the sinking in the film due to the fact that the mid-section was simply not known about at the time. As such, the film is retrospectively historically inaccurate.

"Titanic" was presented to a test audience at a theater in Edina, Minnesota, on July 14, 1997. Tickets to the showing were presented to the audience at the Jodie Foster movie "Contact" on its July 11 opening night at the theater at Mall of America in Bloomington. Because "Titanic" had been receiving considerable industry buzz (much of it bad, due in part to budget concerns), and not wanting to have press at the test showing, ticket recipients were told that they would be seeing an early version of "Great Expectations", starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. At the test screening, when Cameron and others were introducing the film, they continued to maintain the ruse by not mentioning the movie by name, only referring to it as "the movie you are about to see", etc. When the movie started, many in the audience were excited that (they thought) they were getting to see a new trailer for "Titanic", not yet realizing they were seeing the whole movie. Film personnel collected feedback in many ways--including handwritten surveys, post-film interviews, and even stationing personnel in the lobbies and restrooms to listen in on guests' conversations.

In a recently-completed investigation by Tim Maltin, he reveals that the reason the iceberg was not seen was due to a "cold water mirage." This is the opposite of a desert mirage. The multiple layers of cold and warm air cloaked the iceberg. Normally the iceberg could have been seen as far as 12 miles, giving Titanic 30 minutes to avoid. This is revealed in his e-book "Titanic: A Deceiving Night" and his Smithsonian documentary "Titanic's Final Mystery." This also explains why the Californian failed to receive the distress message "Come at once; we are sinking" that crew on Titanic signaled with Morse lamps.

During the sinking of the actual Titanic, there was concern that the davits might not be strong enough to lower the boats fully loaded, although they had in fact been tested under such a weight. The davits in the film, which can be seen flexing under the weight, were made under the same dimensions as originally designed by the White Star Line.

In all of recorded maritime history, no ship ever had a sideswipe collision with an iceberg like Titanic suffered. And no ship has had such an accident since. The force of the blow was likened to a C4 explosion something most modern ships would struggle to survive.

After the ship breaks in half, the bow section sinks rapidly. To film this, the full-size set was in fact divided into sections, but the bow section would not sink fast enough, due to its own buoyancy and the narrow clearance between it and the tank. James Cameron observed that once "God's 10,000,000 kW light" had risen they would have to wait until the next night, and suggested sinking the set, letting the air space between the two decks fill with water, then raising the set again and quickly sinking it before the water ran out. This worked.

During World War I, Titanic's former Second Officer Charles Lightoller served in the Royal Navy Reserve in multiple vessels (including 3 commands). Despite his distinguished record (he would be decorated twice for valor in combat), he would never command a merchant vessel for White Star or any other shipping line. After leaving merchant service, he owned a small motor yacht for much of the rest of his life. His was one of the many private citizens who helped in the evacuation of British and Allied forces from Dunkirk, France; he and his two sons would be credited for evacuating approximately 130 Allied personnel in the dangerously overloaded vessel.

One of the Irish passengers, Patrick A. O'Keefe, was a young man who boarded the Titanic when he was 21 years of age. Just days before he entered the Titanic, he had horrific dreams of the ship sinking and nearly canceled his ticket. However he decided to board on the ship anyway. Once the Titanic was sinking, he managed to survive on the "collapsible B" life raft. He died in 1939 in Manhattan from unknown causes at the age of 48.

Fox executives suggested an hour of specific cuts from the three-hour film. They argued the extended length would mean fewer showings, thus less money even though long epics are more likely to help directors win Oscars. James Cameron refused, telling Fox, "You want to cut my movie? You're going to have to fire me! You want to fire me? You're going to have to kill me!" The executives did not want to start over, because it would mean the loss of their entire investment, but they also initially rejected Cameron's offer of forfeiting his share of the profits as an empty gesture; they felt that profits would be unlikely. Amidst all the doubt, Cameron credits Sherry Lansing, head of co-producer Paramount at the time, for her continued support for the movie, even when no one else seemed to believe in it anymore. Cameron even screened a rough version of the film for Lansing on a small monitor at his own home, and her approval was a turning point for him, confirming that he was on the right track with the movie, and that the three-hour running time was justified. Finally, all doubts held by the studios proved to be moot when the movie returned a giant profit by staying at the top of the box office for weeks.

Paul Rudd auditioned for the lead male role because his own father had been an avid Titanic historian. Despite his being able to reel off factual technical stats about the great ship, the casting team remained unimpressed.

The "full-size" ship exterior set was constructed in a tank on a beach south of Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. Construction started on the 85th anniversary of the real Titanic's launch - May 31, 1996 (see also A Night to Remember (1958)). To reduce costs, the number of instances of some repeated components (such as windows) was reduced, and other parts (such as the funnels and lifeboats) were built at 90% scale to produce the correct visual appearance. The set was oriented to face into the prevailing wind so that the smoke from the funnels would blow the right way.

The line, "I'd rather be his whore than your wife", was originally spoken by Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings in Twin Peaks (1990). Coincidentally, Billy Zane and David Warner, who played Cal Hockley and Spicer Lovejoy respectively, appeared in that episode.

If measured by ticket sales rather than dollar gross, this would rank as the fifth most attended film of all time domestically, having sold an estimated 128 million tickets in its initial run and another 7 million after its 2012 reissue. It was the most attended film of the 1990s and the most attended film since E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (136 million estimated tickets).

According to James Cameron, Fox was initially dubious when he pitched the film. "They were like, 'Oooooohkaaaaaay - a three-hour romantic epic? Sure, that's just what we want. Is there a little bit of Terminator in that? Any Harrier jets, shoot-outs, or car chases?' I said, 'No, no, no. It's not like that.'"

There was one "crucial historical fact" James Cameron chose to omit from the film - the ship that was close to the Titanic, but had turned off its radio for the night and did not hear their SOS calls. "Yes, the [SS] Californian. That wasn't a compromise to mainstream filmmaking. That was really more about emphasis, creating an emotional truth to the film," stated Cameron. He said there were aspects of retelling the sinking that seemed important in pre and post-production, but turned out to be less important as the film evolved. "The story of the Californian was in there; we even shot a scene of them switching off their Marconi radio set," said Cameron. "But I took it out. It was a clean cut, because it focuses you back onto that world. If Titanic is powerful as a metaphor, as a microcosm, for the end of the world in a sense, then that world must be self-contained."

James Horner additionally wrote the song "My Heart Will Go On" in secret with Will Jennings because James Cameron did not want any songs with singing in the film. Céline Dion agreed to record a demo with the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion".

The completed film ignores the freighter Californian, which had stopped for the night due to the ice hazard and was within sight of the Titanic throughout the sinking (the Californian's warning had been received and sent to the bridge but was not placed in the chartroom). An early version of the script included a scene on the Californian, but James Cameron cut out the subplot after filming it to shorten running time. The two actors in the scene on the Californian were Adam Barker as radio operator Cyril Evans and Peter John White as Third Officer Groves.

First movie to be nominated in all seven technical categories (Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects) at the Academy Awards and as of 2016 the only movie to win in all technical categories.

The climactic scene, which features the breakup of the ship directly before it sinks, as well as its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic, involved a tilting full-sized set, 150 extras and 100 stunt performers. James Cameron criticized previous Titanic films for depicting the final plunge of the liner as sliding gracefully underwater. He "wanted to depict it as the terrifyingly chaotic event that it really was". When carrying out the sequence, people needed to fall off the increasingly tilting deck, plunging hundreds of feet below and bouncing off of railings and propellers on the way down. A few attempts to film this sequence with stunt people resulted in some minor injuries and Cameron halted the more dangerous stunts. The risks were eventually minimized "by using computer generated people for the dangerous falls". The shot also featured prominently in the trailer, and Cameron later commented that "that shot alone got our opening weekend audience."

James Cameron's last film for 12 years as a writer and director until Avatar (2009). Between Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), James Cameron worked on the TV series Dark Angel (2000) which was canceled after 2 seasons.

A 162-foot crane originally intended for construction and lighting was mounted on railway tracks and used for most high-level exterior shots, rather than expensive helicopters. The camera platform was big enough for a gyro-stabilized Wescam, a Steadicam and a hand-held camera. James Cameron directed atop it to be able to see the entire set.

Although a sizable publicity campaign had already announced the movie's premiere in July 1997, a lot of elements in post-production (especially the special effects) took longer to complete than anticipated. The summer release of the movie would only be possible with major cuts and compromises to the film. However, after a very successful preview of a rough cut of the movie, James Cameron convinced the studios that they needed to properly finish the film instead of cutting it down. The studio then agreed to delay the release until Christmas 1997.

Mr. Andrews (Victor Garber) angrily notes to Officer Lightoller (Jonny Phillips) that he saw a lifeboat leave with only 12 people aboard, while it could theoretically hold 60 people. This is probably based on a real-life account of a surviving passenger to Walter Lord, who wrote the book "A Night To Remember", where he mentioned that some of the officers ignored the "women and children first" rule. As a result, lifeboat #1 was boarded by Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife (portrayed in the movie by Martin Jarvis and Rosalind Ayres), her secretary, and two other first class men, for a total of only 12 passengers.

All the scenes where there is an exterior sunset shot were filmed at the Fox Studios set in Baja California, Mexico. The set was constructed specifically for the film, as no studio was large enough at the time to encompass the almost full-scale replication of the ship.

Long shots showing the whole ship's exterior were produced by Digital Domain. A 1/20 scale model was filmed and computer-generated images of people, ocean and smoke were added. For one scene, James Cameron instructed them to "imagine we're making a commercial for White Star Lines and we need beautiful shots sweeping around the ship from a helicopter."

This was the first time the Best Song Oscar (for Céline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On") was won by a non-musical Best Picture winner. Best Song Oscar had been won by Best Picture winner only twice before (Going My Way (1944) and Gigi (1958), both musicals).

Several scenes show all four funnels smoking but the smoke from the fourth funnel is fewer and cleaner. The White Star Lines competitors all had four and they did not want to lose face. So the fourth funnel was designed as additional storage space that was used on the first trip for livestock and to provide ventilation.

Bill Paxton, Bernard Hill, and Victor Garber all narrated documentaries on the Titanic after the movie came out. Bernard Hill narrated "Titanic: Secrets Revealed", Victor Garber narrated "Beyond Titanic", and Bill Paxton narrated and starred in "Ghosts of the Abyss", which reunited him with James Cameron and Lewis Abernathy.

The only real decks were the boat deck and A deck, with a facade of plating and lighted portholes completed only on the starboard side. So many lights were required that cinematographer Russell Carpenter commented: "And you walk inside, and 70 miles of one kind of cable and 70 miles of another kind all add up to this Terry Gilliam vision of the telephone company of the 1950s."

To create the drawing of Rose, James Cameron had a photo session with Kate Winslet and took photographs of her sitting in different positions so he could use as reference. Cameron and Winslet didn't know each other well enough at that time for her to pose nude for him, so she posed in a bikini. Cameron had to use his imagination to draw her nude.

The Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set. Additionally, Leonardo DiCaprio said there was no point when he felt he was in danger during filming.

One of the Swedes in the beginning of the film, Erik Holland, is really Norwegian, and currently works as a doorman at a nightclub in Stavanger, Norway. The other, Jari Kinnunen, is an actor from Finland.

Only the starboard side of the set below the superstructure was fully built and riveted. When it came time to film the scenes in Southampton, everything had to be backwards so it could be easily mirrored in post-production, even down to the buttons on people's clothing.

Of the special effects houses involved, VIFX were responsible for the icy, visible breath of the passengers floating in the water after the ship sank. They also worked on the engine room sequence and a lot of the workers seen therein. POP Film handled digital face replacements and matte paintings, Banned from the Ranch took care of some underwater shots, CIS Hollywood were responsible for sky replacements and bluescreen composites, whilst Digital Domain - James Cameron's own company - dealt with the bulk of the big showcase special effects.

James Cameron regular Jenette Goldstein appears in period costume here. Previously she had showed up in period costume at the auditions for Aliens (1986), her first movie with Cameron, thinking it was a period movie.

The wreck of the real Titanic was discovered in 1985 by ocean explorer Robert Ballard. Ballard was officially on a mission to locate the Titanic, but in reality, he had been secretly charged by the US Navy to locate two missing American nuclear submarines with his deep sea robot craft, before they could be found by the Sovjets. After quickly finding the subs, Ballard used the remaining time and resources in a successful search for the Titanic. Ironically, this closely mirrors the premise of The Abyss (1989), one of James Cameron's previous movies. Cameron stated that he was inspired to make The Abyss after seeing a National Geographic film about remote operated vehicles working deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, much the same tools used by Ballard. Cameron's love for deep sea diving which he developed during the making of The Abyss, coupled with his fascination for shipwrecks, finally culminated in the making of Titanic.

Tom Wilkinson was considered for the role of Lovejoy, which eventually went to David Warner. Wilkinson went on to do The Full Monty (1997), which became one of Titanic's contenders at the Oscars next year.

In one of the deleted scenes, Brock's manager Bobby tells him that they're over-budget, the partners depending on them are pissed, and that they're in serious danger of getting shut down. James Cameron later noted that when he was writing this, he had no idea he would be hearing all these things when the production ran into problems.

20th Century Fox acquired 40 acres of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico and started building a brand new studio in May 31 1996. A 17 million gallon tank was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale but production design removed redundant sections on the superstructure and the forward well deck so that it would fit the tank. The remaining sections were filled in digitally. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunk by 10%. While the boat deck and the A-deck were full working sets, the rest of the ship was steel plating. Contained within that was a 50 foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences, while towering above that was a 162 feet tall tower crane on 600 feet of railtrack. This was used as a construction, lighting and camera platform.

The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000 US gallons (1,300,000 L) tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying a powder on actors that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.

The 2007 Doctor Who (2005) Christmas Special "Voyage of the Damned" was broadcast a decade after Titanic (1997). In the 2007 Xmas special, The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) arrives aboard the space passenger liner "Titanic" from the planet Sto. Russell T. Davies whom was the show-runner of Doctor Who (2005) had named the characters Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) after the main protagonists of this film and Russell T. Davies wanted Kate Winslet (Rose) to play River Song, but cast Alex Kingston instead.

Jack kisses Rose's hand three times during the film. The first time was when they meet at the staircase as to say "hello" before walking into the formal dinner party. The second time was at the end when they are both in the water as to say "goodbye". Additionally he kisses her hand when he slips her the note to meet him at the clock.

Stephen Dorff and Billy Crudup both turned down the part of Jack. Dorff later stated that he wasn't very impressed with the movie. He felt that Leonardo DiCaprio would have a hard time matching the success of the movie in his further career, and therefore did not regret his decision.

As the elderly Rose exits the helicopter in her wheelchair, she is holding her pet Pomeranian. This is in tribute to the 12 confirmed dogs on the Titanic. Only three pets survived: two Pomeranians and one Pekinese which, due to their small size, were smuggled onto lifeboats.

The first TV spots for the movie focused almost exclusively on the action and peril, making the film look more like a standard disaster movie than a romantic drama. James Cameron felt that this hugely undersold the movie, so he suggested an alternative campaign that emphasized the drama and love story, to be targeted at female audiences (and to be broadcast during episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986)). Later TV spots combined elements of both.

The film's initial budget, roughly $135 million, adjusted for inflation in 2017 dollars, is closer to $208 million. The final production budget of $200 million, adjusted for inflation in 2017 dollars, is closer to $309 million.

The Titanic Belfast Maritime Museum Ireland opened 31 March 2012, commemorating the centenary of the great ship's demise. Construction began in May 2009 and cost £77 million sterling by completion. The 9 self-guided state-of-the-art interactive galleries are located on the very Harland & Wolff shipyard site where Titanic was originally built.

Became the last Paramount film to premiere on HBO in the United States in April 1999, after the end of a ten-year exclusive contract between the studio and pay cable network. Showtime had begun airing Paramount's films first-run earlier that year.

Christian music artist, Michael W. Smith wrote a song that was in the running to possibly be part of the theme called, In My Arms Again. The tone of the song was a role switch, being something Jack might have sung, if their fates had been reversed.

A scene was filmed with Rose and a friend briefly looking at Jack in the First Class restaurant, obviously appreciative of how he looks in his (borrowed) tuxedo. Rose's friend looks especially enamoured, but Rose turns to her and says, "He's spoken for." This scene featured in the UK theatrical version on its original release, but was not present in the VHS release or the DVD.

Apart from the long, grueling and technically difficult shoot, director James Cameron stated that one of the biggest obstacles he faced was the increasingly negative press coverage. When the industry trade papers got wind of the epic delays, cost overruns, set safety issues and missed delivery dates, they started to relentlessly characterize the production as a waste of money and a sure box office bomb. Cameron suggested to the studios not to go into aggressive defense, but remain silent, in the hope that the press would run out of stories to print before the movie's premiere (or, in his own words, "step back and let them go flying past, and fall because of their own inertia"). Cameron also organized two premieres outside the USA, one in Tokyo and one in the UK (with Prince Charles in attendance), in the hopes that positive word of mouth from the still unbiased foreign press would force the American press to put aside their prejudices. Both strategies worked, as Titanic opened in the USA to rave reviews.

An enclosed 5,000,000 US gallons (19,000,000 L) tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. In order to sink the Grand Staircase, 90,000 US gallons (340,000 L) of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, although no one was hurt. The 744-foot (227 m) long exterior of the RMS Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but being the heaviest part of the ship meant it acted as a shock absorber against the water; to get the set into the water, James Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the dining saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present.

Lorcan Cranitch was the first choice for the role of Thomas Andrews after James Cameron was impressed with his performance as DS Jimmy Beck in Cracker (1993). Victor Garber was cast after Cranitch turned the role down.

James Cameron's original script was a notable omission come Oscar time even though it received nominations at the Writers Guild and Golden Globe Awards. Interestingly, the 1953 film, Titanic (1953) not only received an Oscar nod for its original screenplay but was actually victorious in winning the award also.

At first, Paramount was about to cast Matthew McConaughey as Jack opposite Kate Winslet which Kate confessed on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert that she even auditioned with him too. But then later, Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as per James Cameron's request.

As of 2018, holds the records for being nominated in the most categories at the Academy Awards with 14. Other films which have 14 nominations were nominated in less categories. All About Eve (1950) had two Best Actress and two Best Supporting Actress nominations, and hence was nominated in 12 categories. La La Land (2016) had two Best Original Song nominations, and was nominated in 13 categories.

The men that Jack and Fabrizio win the tickets from at the beginning were named Olaf and Sven. Frozen (2013) has an Olaf and Sven as well, and both movies deal with freezing temperatures. Both movies were also nominated for Oscars.

When Jack and Fabrizio win their tickets to sail on Titanic. Jack reveals he has a Full House 10's over Aces. Given the fact that Jack only drew 1 card he would've won the hand regardless. Sven's hand was only two pair 8's and 6's.

James Cameron described his creative process as "what I'm good at is working with actors to create scenes and then editing their performances to get the absolute best vibrating version of that scene and then share that with the audience. It's an amazing process to go through. Sometimes you think it's not going to work when you get started and then the characters come to life."

In the original script, Fabrizio wasn't killed by the falling smokestack, managing to avoid it at the last second. After the ship sank, he tried to board a lifeboat, but Cal beat him in the head with an oar, cutting open his scalp, and sarcastically tells him to swim to his destination. Fabrizio later dies from his injuries.

Of the seven actors who portrayed the ship's officers in the film, Edward Fletcher who starred as 6th Officer Moody was the only one of the group who wasn't of British origin. He was born in Massachusetts.

In Titanics early development James Cameron had River Phoenix in mind for the real of Jack Dawson But in October of 1993 River Phoenix died in Johnny Depp's club in Los Angeles. So when it came time to make Titanic Leo DiCaprio came of age. Ironically Johnny Depp was also offered the role too but turned it down.

Jack talks about visiting the Santa Monica pier, and one of Rose's photos seen at the end of the film shows her there. At the end of the special edition of James Cameron's previous film "The Abyss", a tidal wave is seen approaching the pier.

When Tommy Ryan is prevented from getting into a lifeboat by First Officer Murdoch, Tommy yells at him "Will you give us a chance to live, you limey bastard!" Limey is a nickname for an English sailor, referencing the age of sailing ships, when English sailors had to drink lime juice a lot to prevent scurvy.

The shot of the water ripping through the lower deck corridors was achieved with a miniature model, which had all its door and wall panels broken apart and then loosely re-assembled with glue, before being blasted by multiple hoses. According to James Cameron, the shot did not look convincing until he tilted the camera angle in post.

The male third class passenger seen getting his beard checked for lice when Rose, Cal and Ruth boards Titanic is director James Cameron. He also plays the black bearded third class passenger wearing a bowler hat when Jack and Fabrizio look for their state room.

Chris O'Donnell (Scent of a Woman, Fried green tomatoes at whistle stop cafe, Batman Forever, Mad Love, vertical limit) was considered to play Jack Dawson but the part went to Leonardo DiCaprio, which Chris took the role of Robin (Batman Forever) away from Leonardo few years before 1997.

Despite being either minor characters or extras Helga the Norwegian third class girl, her family, Jack's room-mates, a Chinese pony-tailed man, a young girl named Cora and her parents and an Irish mother and her two children are seen several times in the film especially during the Saturday night party and the sinking of the ship. Many scenes with these characters had been filmed but most subplots were deleted from the final cut.

Old Rose says "it's been 84 years," which would actually make her 101 years old and the year 1996 when she tells her story--a year prior to the movie release. This means that she would have been 17 years old in 1912, and despite this, she was still served alcohol on the ship (at the time, legal drinking age was 18).

Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet both admitted that they were embarrassed by their performances in this film. Winslet thought her American accent sounded horrible and that her acting could've been better while DiCaprio thought he looked like a "young punk" in this film.

As the box office receipts for the film grew, so did billing on the poster and print ads. When Titanic first opened in 1997, Gloria Stuart's name was absent from posters and advertising. When she garnered a lot of publicity for being a 1930s Hollywood star returning to the movies, her name was added. Victor Garber's agent also petitioned for him to be added, and he was.

In the 1958 Titanic film "A Night to Remember", most of the scenes of the Titanic sinking are seen from the ship's port (left) side. In Cameron's film, most of the sinking scenes are seen from the ship's starboard (right) side.

DiCaprio and Winslet, whose careers skyrocketed following the film's release, both went on to win their first Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, for films starting with the the letter "R." DiCaprio won in 2016 for his role in "The Revenant." Winslet won in 2009 for her role in "The Reader."

Jack mentions to Astor that he is of the "Chippewa Falls Dawsons". This is the nearest city to Lake Wissota which he mentions earlier, when he is saving Rose, as a lake near his childhood home. His childhood home would most likely be Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, United States.

Some of James Horner's score was recycled from his score for Braveheart. For example the music that plays right before the lookouts notice the iceberg is nearly identical to the music that plays right before the Battle of Falkirk.

James Cameron wanted to show a reproduction of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in a scene in which Kate Winslet is seen unpacking it. When the ship goes down, the painting is shown sinking below the waves. The Picasso Administration decided that it could not authorize the inclusion of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the film "because the painting has been on display at the Museum of Modern Art for well over 60 years and certainly did not go down with the ship when the Titanic sank," said Feder, who, in addition to his work with the Artists Rights Society, is an art historian who has taught at Columbia University and Queens College. "When I viewed the film several weeks after its opening, I was surprised to discover that the scene depicting the submersion of Les Demoiselles was still in it. We negotiated a fee after the fact, which, as one could imagine, included a substantial penalty."

On the final night of shooting in Nova Scotia a dangerous prank was played that saw PCP (the dissociative hallucinogen 'angel dust') mixed into the clam chowder served to the cast and crew. 80 people were became ill, and more than 50 were hospitalized suffering hallucinations. When James Cameron realized what was happening, he forced himself to vomit before the drug took full effect. Bill Paxton felt listless for two weeks after the incident (although PCP's primary effects only last a few hours, the drug itself can take eight or more days to completely metabolize out of the body). The culprit(s) were never caught.

When the Oscars for "Best Sound Effects Editing" were presented for this film, the oversized envelope was given to category presenter Mike Myers by Bart the Bear, the enormous grizzly who appeared on stage with his owner/trainer Doug Seus (March 23, 1998 / Shrine Auditorium Los Angeles).

We see a priest performing the last rites for some of the passengers during the sinking; we see a priest do the same for Marcus Wright who's awaiting execution in Terminator Salvation (2009), and James Cameron directed the first two Terminator films. Also, John Connor calls Marcus a pretty convincing liar, which paraphrases Cal's line to Jack.

Though not based on Disney's Beauty and the Beast Rose and Jack are similar to Belle and Beast as both are primary protagonists who fall in love with each other while Cal like Gaston is the main villain and serves as a love rival.

When Jack is warning Rose about how cold the water is, he refers to it as 'a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body'. This was an actual quote, told by 2nd Officer Charles Lightoller (played in the film by Jonny Phillips) to the American Inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic.

Leonardo DiCaprio's pronounced Californian accent, chiefly his inability to pronounce the letter 'g' on the ends of words, lent an anachronistic shade to his performance, further emphasized by his overwhelmingly modern appearance.

When Jack prevents Rose from committing suicide, he shares a story about how he once fell into freezing cold water while ice fishing and how "it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body." This was an actual quote from a Titanic survivor describing the temperature of the North Atlantic water.

As originally scripted, Cal was intended to actually find Rose aboard the Carpathia after the sinking. Rose was to tell him to let her mother know that she died on the Titanic, and that he would leave her alone for the rest of her life.

A 2012 episode of Mythbusters MythBusters: Titanic Survival (2012) tested whether or not Jack could have joined Rose on the floating door without submerging it and therefore survive the story. As it turned out, he could have, particularly if they strapped Rose's life vest underneath the door to add buoyancy. James Cameron, who appeared on the episode, maintained that Jack needed to sacrifice himself for thematic reasons, since his only concern was Rose's survival, not his own. He later said that the hypothermia and short time to come up with this solution would have made any practical implementation virtually impossible. Cameron did concede that he could have used a smaller door to make it more plausible.

Considerable controversy arose when James Cameron depicted the suicide of First Officer Murdoch. While Cameron did apologize to Murdoch's family members for the upset the scene caused them, he still kept the shot in the film, stating simply that while no one could prove that it did happen, neither could anyone prove that it didn't. Murdoch's body was never recovered, but it is generally agreed that he either froze to death in the water or went down with the ship.

Danny Nucci (Fabrizio) stated that there were several different versions of his death that were scripted. One of them would have involved him swimming up to Cal's swamped lifeboat and begging to be let aboard, saying it was his destiny to go to America. At that point Cal was supposed to have knocked him unconscious with his oar and tell him "IT'S THAT WAY!"

An alternative ending was shot, in which Brock spots old Rose before she throws the diamond into the sea. She shows it to him and allows him to touch it before she throws it anyway. James Cameron didn't use it, because it focused too much on Brock, and took away too much closure for the character of Rose.

When Rose is afloat on the wood looking up at the stars, there is a vague image of the necklace. It is outlined by brighter stars shaping the heart loosely, and a few bright stars shaping the chain. This shot is omitted in the 3D re-release, in which it is replaced with a shot of how the stars really looked in 1912.

When we last see Cal's bodyguard Lovejoy in the finished film, he is hanging onto the side rail of the Titanic as it is breaking in half, with the side of his head appearing quite bloody. A scene had been cut that explains how Lovejoy got to look so bloodied and disheveled. The existing scene where Cal chases Jack and Rose down the Grand Staircase, shooting at them and then running out of bullets (prior to realizing he put his coat which contains the diamond on Rose), was actually supposed to continue. Cal hands Lovejoy the gun and tells him that if he gets the diamond from Rose, he can keep it. Lovejoy then loads the gun and goes hunting for them in the dining room. Lovejoy's head gets bloodied when Jack catches him off guard, crashes Lovejoy's head through a glass window and roughs him up a bit before he and Rose run away. James Cameron states on the 3-Disc Special Edition DVD that includes the scene, that it was not only considered much too long, but preview audiences didn't buy the fact that Lovejoy turns into a murderous villain trying to get a diamond from Jack and Rose as the ship is sinking (and they're ALL liable to die anyway).

Several main characters are not present in the ending sequence, including Cal Hockley, Rose's mother Ruth, Bruce Ismay and Molly Brown. This is because they survived the sinking. Only the characters who died on the Titanic are present in the dream sequence, because it serves to illustrate Rose being reunited with all the people she lost when it sank, including Jack.

The bedtime story the Irish mother tells her children is the story of "Oisin and Niamh," a story about a mortal man who falls in love with a goddess and lives with her for 300 years in the land of eternal youth and beauty, Tír Na N'óg, before returning home and dying when he steps off his horse. The choice seems particularly apt when considering that though Jack died, his love story was immortalized with Rose, who lived on.

When Mr. Ismay is being lowered down in one of the lifeboats, the band is playing Orpheus from the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus descended to Hell to rescue Eurydice, his wife, from a life of misery in the underworld, but just before they escape, she falls back in. Since the camera shows Ismay being lowered at the time, its almost like he's descending into his own personal Hell, because if it weren't for his insistence on speeding up, the Titanic never would have hit the iceberg. So he gets to watch it sink while the lifeboat slowly sails away. There is another interesting analogue to the Orpheus myth in the movie, when Rose descends the lower decks, in order to save Jack from drowning in the submerged parts of the ship; unfortunately, she is not able to save Jack in the end either.

Cal's snide comments notwithstanding, Rose intuitively has quite an eye for art. She bought herself a canvas considered one of the most influential paintings of the 20th century: Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Ladies of Avignon). During the sinking, it is shown floating in Rose's cabin -but actually it has been on exhibit safe and dry for decades at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (see Goofs).

In order to visit Rose as she's touring the bridge with Thomas Andrews and Cal on the day of the sinking, Jack steals a coat and hat belonging to a first class passenger named A.L. Ryerson. A.L. Ryerson (Arthur Larned Ryerson) was a real 1st class Titanic passenger who boarded in Cherbourg with his wife Mrs. Emily Maria Ryerson and three of their five children including their son John Borie Ryerson. The Ryerson's stayed in staterooms B57, 63, and 66 and the family purchased their tickets from the White Star Line for a total of 262 pounds 7 shillings. The scene in which Jack steal's the coat depicts a famous picture of a father and his young son playing with a top on Titanic's deck. The scene in the movie takes place on April 14, 1912, the day of the sinking. The original photo however was taken on the day of the sailing, and it's generally accepted that it was the Spedden who appear in the picture. Originally from Harford, PA the Ryersons were traveling aboard the Titanic to Cooperstown, NY. Emily and the children were rescued aboard life boat 4, but Arthur perished in the sinking.

According to James Cameron, the ending is meant to be ambiguous regarding whether or not Rose dies, so as to allow the audience to decide. Many fans claim that Old Rose is simply dreaming, while others claim that she has died and gone to heaven (being a restored Titanic), along with everyone who died when the ship sank. The screenplay confirms this intentional ambiguity: "We PAN OFF the last picture to Rose herself, warm in her bunk. A profile shot. She is very still. She could be sleeping, or maybe something else."

In Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron (2017) and Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron (2012), director James Cameron and a group of experts researched new facts and evidence concerning the sinking of the Titanic that had become available in the twenty years since the film's release. The object was to see if new information had made the movie retrospectively inaccurate. They discovered that Cameron and his crew had been quite adequate in their designs of the ship's interiors; the small exception was the telegraph room, which had been modeled after Titanic's sister ship, but looked a bit different. Fortunately, scenes that had been shot there were deleted from the final print. Cameron also found out that the ship's telegraph had broken down a few days to the ship's sinking. The two telegraphers on board had repaired it, in spite of regulations to wait for the ship to reach the mainland. By ignoring this rule, they were able to contact the Carpathia to come and pick up survivors, saving hundreds of lives. There is evidence to believe that an outer door on one of the lower levels was opened to hasten the evacuation; unfortunately, this also sped up the ship's flooding. Cameron and his team also did several (computer) simulations of the sinking and evacuation of the ship. The movie depicts the ship breaking between the last two smokestacks, while in reality, it probably broke halfway through the middle, just below the waterline. As a result, Titanic's stern section most likely did not drop back into the water after the ship broke in two, as depicted in the movie; it probably got tilted further into the upright position, until it finally sank. Concerning the evacuation, it is unlikely that more passengers would have been saved if Titanic had a full complement of lifeboats; the sinking of the ship went so fast that the crew probably would have been unable to lower more boats in the water than they did. Lastly, there is anecdotal evidence that Molly Brown (played by Kathy Bates) eventually commandeered her boat to go back and pick up survivors, and even threatened to throw off the unwilling crewman if he didn't cooperate.

The line said by Rose to Cal when she runs back to Jack, 'I'd rather be his whore than your wife' was also said in Twin Peaks 6 years earlier. The same episode of Twin Peaks starred Billy Zane and David Warner who also starred in Titanic.